


Photog

by loveandallthat



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-22
Updated: 2014-01-22
Packaged: 2018-01-09 14:50:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1147281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveandallthat/pseuds/loveandallthat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Stiles takes a photography elective in college, and just when he starts to feel bad about using his busy friends as models for his projects, learns something pretty interesting about Derek's past. Canon compliant through most of season 3. A college story with few to no spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Photog

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WhoNatural](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhoNatural/gifts).



> Belated birthday present to Niamh/[howlnatural](http://howlnatural.tumblr.com)/[WhoNatural](http://archiveofourown.org/users/WhoNatural/pseuds/WhoNatural), based on [one of her prompts](http://howlnatural.tumblr.com/post/66873638289/also-is-there-an-au-using-the-duran-photos-of). I hope you like it! 
> 
> (That was the working title while I wrote it and in the end I just . . . couldn't part with it.) Sorry this is accidentally dialogue heavy again.

Stiles is approximately as good at being in college as he was high school – that is to say, very good at classes when not distracted by the supernatural – but of course he has managed to get himself so well on track that he needs to fill his schedule with fluff classes just to be considered a full-time student to keep his scholarship.

 

Also of course, he managed to not realize that until way too late in the sign up period, and he ended up with photography. _Photography._

 

Which is actually not as bad as he thinks, because when he shows up for the first day he gets to borrow a very expensive camera, and the only homework is to photograph random items around his room and try to make the photographs speak to the hypothetical audience. The next week is easy landscapes or outdoor scenes. It is almost fun and relaxing, and Stiles maintains an A- average throughout.

 

The trouble comes with photographing people. Stiles is lucky to have a lot of friends in the area, a luxury not afforded to some in the class he sees pairing off with each other to model for the shots. Stiles figures it will be easier with people with whom he already spends all of his time. He picks Scott, first, but of course there really is nobody less able to sit still and listen to orders/suggestions than Scott McCall. Stiles appreciates the effort, he really, really does, but he needs someone else, probably. What a shame Jackson is gone; Stiles thinks to himself that he would be a pretty good choice and probably even enjoy it, the narcissist.

 

His shoot with Lydia takes a lot of begging to pull off but is eventually worth it and remarkably candid, and his grades rise a little before she has to leave to attend a presentation for something so intellectual that Stiles tries not to think about it, because if he does he may not be able to stop himself from researching the hell out of it. So he waves a slightly over-enthusiastic goodbye having been lucky enough to land the job of driving Lydia and all of her belongings to the train station.

 

Allison is pretty damn decent and Stiles even gets extra credit on a well-spaced shot of her shooting an arrow from her sleekest bow, but she is also very busy and he feels bad even asking, sometimes. Come to think of it, everyone he knows has better things to do.

 

Well. Almost everybody.

 

Possibly the worst thing happens when Stiles is at Scott’s house one day, watching TV and eating a ridiculous amount of food, enjoying a brief lull in the activity of their life, and the doorbell rings.

 

“Want me to get it?” Stiles asks, because Scott is trying in vain to wipe the cheese dust off of his hand without putting down his soda.

 

“Nah, thanks dude, I got it,” Scott says as he finally manages, and stands up. He almost trips over the mess they have made of the floor, and looks back at Stiles with a ‘we’re good’ expression to reassure him. Stiles laughs, and Scott bows. Stiles hears the door open, hears Scott say, “um,” before Peter Hale of all people walks in uninvited.

 

“Whoa!” Stiles stands up, knocking over the bowl of chips with his one hand while the other catches him from falling.

 

“Hello Stiles,” Peter says, smirking.

 

“Oh my g- what the hell are you doing here?”

  
“This is my house; I’ll ask the questions,” Scott interjects, and Peter nods. “What the hell are you doing here?”

 

“Good one, buddy,” Stiles says, at which Scott just looks at him, and turns back to Peter.

 

“I'm not here to intrude,” he says, like he had not just walked in the front door without being invited.

 

“We don’t actually know what’s going on,” Peter begins.

 

“Of course you don’t,” Stiles mutters.

 

“What we do know,” Peter continues, slightly louder, “is that there are rumors that there have been wolves in the forest, and it wasn’t any of us.”

 

“It wasn’t any of us either,” Scott replies, suddenly businesslike. “It’s not even close to the full moon, and trust me, we’ve been keeping busy.”

 

“It could have been just a rumor that got out of hand too quickly, or a different kind of animal altogether. I just wanted to . . . check in. See if you had any information. That’s all.”

 

“Well, bye then.”

 

“Oh, wait. I would have called, but it seems I don’t have Scott’s number. Neither does Derek; he only has Stiles’s.”

 

“But I text Derek all the time!” Scott protests.

  
“He probably didn’t store your number.”  
  
“And he kept Stiles’s? Anyway he should have been able to guess by the messages I sent.”

 

“No matter,” Peter says, handing Scott his phone. When Scott takes it, it is already opened to the new contact screen and he goes through the fields quickly, then closes out of it.

 

Quite possibly the creepiest thing to ever happen occurs. Set as Peter’s wallpaper on his phone, right there with the favorite apps on top, is a professional-looking photograph of none other than Derek, Peter’s fucking nephew, in what appears to be an ad for jeans. (And a convincing one at that.)

 

“That’s . . . not right.” Good old Scott, getting to the point as always.

 

“Oh, that. I like Derek to be as uncomfortable as possible when he borrows my phone.”

 

“Not really any better.”

 

Stiles cannot believe it. “Derek models; he actually models.”

 

“Modeled,” Peter corrects. “Just the once. Bit of extra spending money on the run,” he adds, before Scott can ask.

 

“We don’t know how to feel about this.”

 

“I’ll see you boys later.”

 

\---

 

What finally comes over Stiles he may never know, but he still finds himself knocking (it is more important to be polite when asking a favor, probably) on the door to Derek’s loft one Thursday night.

 

And of course Derek answers the door shirtless and in tight jeans, which. Wear whatever you want in your own house, and all that, but how is that even a comfortable way to lounge around? Given that was what Derek was doing, and who even knows what Derek does when nobody is around.

 

“Stiles,” he greets him, somehow seeming surprised to see him though he should have recognized the footsteps and smell long before, had he been paying the slightest bit of attention.

 

“Yo,” he says casually, as if people still say that, “What’s up?”

 

“Not much,” Derek says conversationally, but Stiles thinks he hears curiosity and, if he listens closely, humor. “Do you want to come in?” he adds, like it just occurred to him now.

 

(Frankly, for Stiles, that idea _has_ just occurred to him now, right as Derek says it.)

 

“Sure,” he answers, like that was the plan all along. “Yep. In.”

 

The atmosphere is suddenly confusing and strange. Stiles walks in and stands in front of the couch bends his knees and straightens them again. Derek notices this and walks over in front of the chair across the coffee table. Stiles sits, and immediately regrets his decision when Derek remains standing.

 

Stiles shifts slightly, and leans forward. “So,” he forces his voice to be casual, “I hear you’re a model.”

  
Derek groans, falls backwards into the chair behind him and sits with his head in his hands. “Peter?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“Which one?”

 

“Which one as in there are more than one as in multiple? Like the one I saw was not the only one but there are many of them? I'm just trying to be clear here.” Stiles holds his hands up as though Derek will believe his act at nonchalance.

 

“There may have been . . . a few.”

 

“Few like five?”

 

“Like . . . twenty.” Stiles bursts out laughing.

 

“If you don’t show them to me, you know I can get Danny to find them for me, right?”

 

“I will take my chances.” Derek stands up and walks to the kitchen area and comes back a few moments later and puts a glass of water in front of Stiles, the angriest hospitality that Stiles has seen in quite some time. He picks up the glass but does not drink any, just turns it around in his hands and almost sloshes water over the side before he puts it back down.

 

“Peter said you only did one,” Stiles says to the water.

 

“I only told him about one. I figured he’d have found the others by now.”

 

“I’ll find them, one way or another,” Stiles points out, awkwardness fading.

 

“I know,” Derek admits. Stiles laughs.

 

“Do you have the jacket-over-the-shoulder pose? Watch checking? Underwear? Loungewear? Winter wear? Lumberjack apparel?”

 

“Lumberjack apparel?”

 

“Because of the . . . beard/scruff combo? No?”

 

Derek rolls his eyes and disappears for several minutes. He comes back carrying an outdated laptop, opened, with the screen facing toward him. “If I make this really easy for you, do you promise not to tell anybody?”

 

Stiles’s eyes widen. “You mean you have them? Oh, wait. I can’t do that. I can promise not to use my skills or Danny’s to help people find them, but that’s the best we’ve got.”

 

“I wasn’t aware this was a negotiation.”

 

“Well you started it!”

 

“Fine,” Derek relents, setting the laptop directly in front of Stiles on the table. It is, hilariously, already open to what appears to be a website containing Derek’s entire portfolio. He clicks on the first picture – no fucking way. _No way._ Impossibly, crazily, _fantastically,_ the first click opens a picture of Derek in a red plaid shirt. Derek looks at him like he can read his mind and is not happy about what he thinks. Stiles gestures at the screen, trying to convey a simple message of _but you don’t understand_ when his hand knocks into the glass of water, almost spilling it but for Derek leaning across him to catch it just before it has the chance. He hands it to Stiles who drinks half of it, partly to not spill it and partly to seem like a decent guest who does not expect his host to poison him. Because that is the type of guest he is. Probably.

 

“OK,” Stiles says, still looking at all of the pictures, some he guessed and some he most definitely did not. “Here’s the funny part. Well the funnier part, anyway. I'm taking a photography elective – not that photography electives are inherently funny, although. Anyway, the funny part is that I have to take pictures of people. And you’re a person who’s used to that kind of stuff. More than my previous models, at least.”

 

“Who were your previous models?” Derek asks, and well fair is fair. Stiles hands over the camera (they did film for a while, but are luckily back to digital) so Derek can scroll through the pictures.

 

“These already look fine,” is not what Stiles expected, but it is what he gets.

 

“Thanks,” he answers, suspicious, “but I can’t keep asking the same people when they have so much going on.”

 

“And because I have no life these days . . .”

 

“No! No. That’s not why,” Stiles argues without expounding.

 

“Fine, sure.”

 

“Wait, really? Why?”

 

“Maybe I really do have no life. Or I'm just curious.”

 

“What about?” And Derek, of course, does not answer, just sets Stiles’s glass in the sink, which he takes as his cue to leave.

 

\---

 

They do, however, get together that weekend to attempt a shoot.

 

“What do you think of the setup?” Stiles asks when Derek arrives.

  
“Not the worst I’ve seen,” he answers, looking around. “I would have helped.”

 

Stiles raises one eyebrow. “Isn’t that my job? Anyway, you’re helping enough just doing what you’ll be doing.” Derek shrugs.

 

“And you’re sure what I'm wearing is fine?” Derek persists. Unfortunately this causes Stiles to have a reason to closely examine what he has on, which is just unfair. Tight, usual gray Henley, top three buttons undone, and tight black jeans.

 

“I think we can make it work,” he answers past his suddenly dry throat.

 

He takes one picture while Derek is still getting into a pose, causing him to glare and Stiles to laugh. Until he looks at the picture, and somehow it still looks good. How is that even possible? He tries again, taking pictures between poses instead of during them, and they always turn out the same, namely, fantastic.

 

It quickly becomes a game to him, telling Derek to move into totally ridiculous positions because _trust me I'm the photographer_ and he hilariously obeys and goes along with it, except. Except that when Stiles captures them they somehow do not look ridiculous at all; they look perfect, and sexy, and even incredibly natural. What the actual hell.

 

When they finish, Derek offers to help clean up, and then starts without waiting for an answer, which is at least as weird as the “perfect picture no matter what” shtick he had just shown off.

 

So despite the awkwardness and the incredible confusion, Stiles is incapable of thinking of a good reason not to ask Derek to do their next shoot. And because he is Stiles Stilinski, he feels the absolute need to choose the weirdest possible theme from the entire list of suggested shoots. _Mythical figures._

 

“You want me to be a Greek God,” Derek says flatly when he hears what the theme is.

 

The thought has not actually occurred to Stiles until now; he had never fully considered the implications. “Yes,” he answers immediately anyway.

 

The shoot goes phenomenally. Even the cheesiest poses, fit for children’s action figures or covers of picture books, look comfortable and mobile when Derek does them. Stiles desperately wants it to be hilarious and awkward, but it ends up perplexing and sexy. How he manages to make that work in cheesy Greek armor is a mystery, but it stares Stiles right in the face with evidence that is impossible to dispute.

 

Derek actually gets into it, focusing on what needs to be done and making the action shots look, well, action-y, and Stiles has a brief second of being excited about his grade before he realizes he has forgotten to take a shot for a full minute and quickly gets back to work. Incredibly, the shoot is even better than their first.

 

It turns out that nobody else found a model who could pull off the shoot as well as Derek, and Stiles ends up with his second A+ of the course.

 

In fact, the professor thinks that everyone in the course did such a good job on this particular project, that he organizes a small exhibit of the photos one evening the next week. Stiles spends an unusually long time debating whether or not to tell Derek about it, but eventually settles on no.

 

Which is how he ends up standing in front of a blown-up photograph of Derek Hale, in full ridiculous armor with a fucking prop sword, surrounded by approximately every woman in his photography class. After the show has ended.

 

Stiles is waiting for Scott to arrive to drive him home, since he was nice enough to have lent him the Jeep earlier in the day without even asking questions, but apparently that favor was not worth the effort to come in and rescue Stiles from far too many Derek-admirers.

 

“Why didn’t you tell me they were exhibiting my picture?” a voice behind him asks, and no. No, no, no, no, no.

 

“Where’s Scott,” Stiles asks, forcing a relaxed tone.

 

“Still on his date,” Derek answers, ignoring the fact that all of the spectators are looking back and forth between the picture (front and center of the exhibit), and its model. “I'm glad,” he adds to his previous question, “It seems like your professor even liked it.”

 

Stiles drops his face into his hands, and Derek takes that as a cue to peruse the rest of the pieces. Everyone around him breaks out of their reprieve, slowly, and one girl even turns to him and says, “Wait, so he’s your friend? Is he single?”

 

“What’s it to you?” Stiles snaps, and oops. That may have been rude. Still, “he’s more than just a pretty face who looks good in Greek armor, you know. He could do, and has done, this professionally, but he did it for free for me, and helped me with the setup, and he came here to pick me up because my friend is on a date and using my car.”

 

“Um,” the girl says, “Are you trying to get me not to want his number? Because I’ve got to say, it’s not working very well.”

 

Stiles hears a laugh from several feet away. Damn werewolf hearing. He looks over his shoulder, but Derek’s back is turned while he admires a different photo. Stiles has every intention of going right over there to . . . well he has no plan, but it turns out to be a moot point when the professor comes back to lock up and realizes there are still about fifteen people hanging around, and ushers them out.

 

When Derek gets all the way into the driver’s side of the Camaro, Stiles thinks he might be in the clear, but of course, no such luck.

 

“More than just a pretty face, huh?” Derek says, smirking so hard he is practically smiling.

 

“I am never going to live this down,” Stiles groans. Except that Derek does not look at all ready to laugh at him, and is instead giving him a look that communicates with surprising clarity _I don’t know what to do with you._

Luckily Stiles knows, and has known since the stupid lumberjack picture. Grateful for the knowledge that Derek could stop him at any time and is not doing so, he leans slightly across into Derek’s space and kisses him almost too long for it to be chaste.

 

“Thanks,” he breathes, still in Derek’s space, “for modeling for me. And the ride. I mean, even though it hasn’t happened yet.”

 

“No problem,” Derek says, glancing at Stiles like he has a few new ideas of what to do with him, before putting the car into gear to drive out of the lot. He hides his smile the whole drive to the Stilinski’s house, but Stiles still notices it when he glances back to wave an awkward goodbye with one last muttered thank you that he knew Derek would hear anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm in denial about the demise of the Camaro.
> 
> Follow me on tumblr if you like; I'm [loveandallthat](http://loveandallthat.tumblr.com) and I take story prompts for a lot of fandoms and post a lot of nonsense. (And I write birthday fics!)
> 
> All criticism is highly encouraged, and comments are welcomed and loved. Thanks for reading!


End file.
